Once a ticket has been created and is assigned to an agent, it's the agent's job to resolve the support request. To do that, you may need to gather more information from the requester. To communicate with the requester, you add public comments to the ticket. Public comments can be read by anyone who has access to the ticket.
This article includes the following sections:
Related articles:
Commenting basics
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Public comments can be read by anyone who has access to the ticket, including anyone copied on the ticket. When you add a public comment, the requester is notified via an email message (unless the notification trigger is disabled). If the requester responds back to the email notification or comments in the ticket, their response is added as a public comment to the ticket. All of your communication is captured in the ticket.
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Private comments, also known as internal notes, are only visible to agents, not to the ticket requester or any other end-users who might be copied on the ticket. A ticket with only private comments is considered a private ticket. Public comments can be made internal-only, if needed (see Changing a ticket comment from public to private). Private comments have a yellow background.
If a comment is added to a ticket while you are viewing it, the comment is temporarily given a blue background to help you notice it. Other ticket updates, such as changes to Followers, are also shown temporarily in blue. The exception is the Zendesk Agent Workspace which doesn't support blue (temporary) colors for comments.
Ticket comment limits
- Each ticket has a maximum limit of 5,000 comments. When this limit is reached, you'll get an error if you try to add any more comments. The ticket can still be updated in other ways, as long as the updates don't include additional comments.
- Each individual ticket comment has a maximum limit of 65,535 characters. This character limit includes all HTML tags and characters.
Adding a public or private comment to a ticket
You can add public or private (internal) comment to a ticket.
To add a comment to a ticket
- Select a ticket.
- To enter a public comment, select Public reply,
or to enter a private comment, select Internal
note.
If you choose Internal note, see About adding attachments to private comments for information about how the attachment will be handled in the subsequent email notification.
- Enter your comment.
- Click Submit to update the ticket.
You cannot delete a comment after it is added to the ticket.
It's also possible to add a note to more than one ticket at a time by bulk updating tickets. See Managing tickets in bulk.
An additional way to manage ticket responses is through the use of macros. With macros, you can streamline your workflow by applying simple, standard responses to requests. Macros can be created from scratch, or they can be based on existing ticket properties. See Using macros to update tickets for more information.
Adding formatting and images to comments
You can add links, inline images, and formatting such as italics, bolding, or bulleted lists to your ticket comments.
Rich text formatting options are available at the bottom of the comment field.
Adding formatting to ticket comments
You can use the rich text formatting toolbar to apply standard formatting to a ticket comment.
To add formatting to your comment
- Click the T at the bottom of the comment
field to open the formatting toolbar.
- Select the formatting you want to apply to the
text.
Toolbar button Formatting Keyboard shortcuts Increase/decrease heading style Increase: Ctrl + +
⌘ + + (Mac)Decrease: Ctrl + -
⌘ + - (Mac)
Bold Ctrl + B
⌘ + B (Mac)Italicize Ctrl + I
⌘ + I (Mac)Change the text color. Agent Workspace only. Bulleted list Ctrl Shift + 8
⌘ + Shift + 8(Mac)Numbered list Ctrl + Shift + 7
⌘ + Shift + 7 (Mac)Decrease paragraph indentation Ctrl + [
⌘ + [ (Mac)Increase paragraph indentation Ctrl + ]
⌘ + ] (Mac)Block quote Ctrl + Shift + 9
⌘ + Shift + 9 (Mac)Code block Ctrl + Shift + 6
⌘ + Shift + 6 (Mac)Code span Ctrl + Shift + 5
⌘ + Shift + 5 (Mac)Hyperlink Ctrl + K
⌘ + K (Mac)Horizontal line Ctrl + Shift + L
⌘ + Shift + L (Mac)
Adding inline images to a ticket comments
You can add inline images to a ticket comment.
To add inline images
- Drag and drop an image from your computer into the comment window, or paste a copied image into the window by right-clicking and selecting Paste or by pressing Ctrl or ⌘ + V.
Adding tables to ticket comments
Although you cannot add tables to your comments using the rich text editor options, you can incorporate tables in two ways:
- Installing and using the Tables app.
- Copying and pasting a table from another editor,
such as Excel or Google Sheets.Note: Pasting tables offers limited functionality. Agents cannot add more columns or rows and they cannot start a table from scratch. These features may be considered for the future.
32 comments
Joanna Isac
Any plans to add user-level internal notes? These would be automatically visible on any tickets opened by that user.
3
Dave Dyson
0
Ashish Kumar Mishra
Hi @... Does Zendesk have an API to post a public reply on the ticket? if yes, can it be done in bulk?
If through API it's not possible then do we have a way to select all tickets on a particular view and edit in bulk? Currently I can only see 30 tickets in the views that I have created and I need to update ~2k tickets. What would be the easiest way to do this?
0
Dave Dyson
Yes, you can update tickets in bulk via the API using the Update Many endpoint – you can update 100 tickets at a time that way.
You can also update up to 100 tickets at a time via Bulk edit in Views: Managing tickets in bulk
The third way you might be able to do this is by using an Automation, which can process up to 1000 tickets per hourly run. You'd need to be careful to create automation criteria that will only match the tickets you want to change, and provide a way to ensure that the automation only is processed once per ticket (i.e., once the automation has processed a ticket, that ticket will no longer match the automation's criteria). I wouldn't really recommend this method simply because of the potential for error.
Hope that helps!
0
Krizzia Kaey
Hi, how to add internal notes as a column?
0
Jeff C
Hi Krizzia,
I am afraid that this is not a possibility at this time as adding Columns is not a feature currently available in the Text composer.
0
Krizzia Kaey
How about a URL? Do you have any options to put URL type custom field that can be viewed in the view page? Currently, we are putting URL in internal comments
0
Dane
For custom field types, URL is not available. Please refer to About custom field types for more information.
0
Christle
Aimee Spanier It seems that the formatting of table in agent workspace has changed. Whenever we paste a table in an internal comment, the table does not show up, but the details show up but they look weird. Any insights on this?![](/hc/user_images/X0kUxa3v_OM-pY-j7QcYHQ.png)
0
Dekbi
I have tried it personally and this should be working properly whenever you paste a table from another editor, such as Excel or Google Sheets.
There are some quick initial steps you can take to try resolving this issue:
If you still encounter the same issue, feel free to contact us using the steps in our documentation Contacting Zendesk Customer Support.
0
Mateusz Gamroth
Is it possible to add a comment to a ticket without submitting it?
We have the situation that agents submit a ticket to another level, then need to contact the customer again and leave a note about that.
At the moment we need to route the ticket back and forth in that case.
Is there any possibility to just add a note without triggering a trigger?
0
Brett Bowser
Just to confirm, is this comment supposed to be visible to the customer or only to agents on the account? If you're just trying to prevent an email notification from going out to the customer but the comment should be visible to the customer then I would recommend adding a checkbox condition or something similar to your already created trigger. If an agent toggles the checkbox field then the trigger would not fire. The only condition you'd need to add to your trigger is [Checkbox Name] > Unchecked or something similar.
Let me know if I'm misunderstanding your question!.
0
Mateusz Gamroth
Hello Brett Bowser, thank you for the quick reply! :)
We are just using notes internally and we are using triggers to send the tickets to other departments.
I.e. If you submit a ticket as solved it will be solved and remain in your department.
Other times if you submit a ticket as open, you are sending it to another department (view).
So when you open that ticket while it is being at the other department and adding a comment and then submitting as open it would automatically go back to your department. (view)
We would then need to submit it again so that it goes back to the appropriate department.
But I think adding a checkbox and adding a condition to those triggers might be a solution.
Would there be any possibility to bulk update triggers and add such a condition? We have literally 100s of them now? Maybe you got an idea?
0
Brett Bowser
I did some digging on my end but couldn't find a way to bulk update tickets at this time. If you have developers available, they may be able to use our API along with a custom script to update the necessary triggers. My knowledge in that area is rather limited but hopefully your own developers can help point you in the right direction.
Let me know if there's anything else I can assist with in the meantime.
0
Lynn Di
Hi!
I was wondering, is it possible for a ticket status to automatically change from 'pending' to 'open' when an internal note is made? If so, how?
0
Stephen Belleau
Lynn Di You bet! That can be done via trigger. Before you do exactly that though, you might want to consider some scenarios. Since end-user comments will always reopen the ticket (even if it comes in via internal note), you're likely talking about reopening when an agent leaves an internal note?
For example, if you have a situation where the requester is an agent, and the requester leaves an internal note, then it definitely makes sense to reopen the ticket. This trigger recipe can help: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408825831962-Why-is-the-customer-s-reply-not-changing-the-ticket-status-to-open-#h_01ENTK5CA5YGCM37VQ9E7ZCWVH
However, if the assignee working on the ticket leaves an internal note after it's set to Pending, you may not want it to reopen. The trigger above will only fire when the agent is requester, not assignee, so perhaps start with that! You can adjust and refine as needed from there.
0
Todd Coldiron
Need to add a checklist to a change ticket with a specific type "Employee Termination", after every new change ticket with that type is created. How?
0
Dave Dyson
0
vincent solitario
How can we make comments to automatic public reply instead of internal note in facebook messenger.
We are using facebook/facebook messenger and everytime the ticket created the comments is INTERNAL NOTE and the second option is Public reply and what we want is to make it into a PUBLIC REPLY then the second option is Internal note.
0
Christine
You can make agents' comments public by default by navigating to the Admin Center > Object and rules > Settings and enable the following options under Comments:
Hope this helps! See Changing the default privacy of ticket comments for more detailed information.
1
Amanda Jenkins
Could we get a call out or a mention of an explanation of the "blue" comments in tickets? For example, in my screenshot, you can see that one of the comments has a blue back ground. Support explained that "This highlights the latest change to a ticket while you are viewing the ticket. So if you are looking at a ticket and a new comment is added, the new comment will be highlighted in blue" but I am not able to find any mention of this in any documentation (and neither was support) but it would be helpful to be able to send to folks who are asking about it.
Thanks!
0
Grady Marin
When attempting to add an attachment to Zendesk's Private Comments App, it does not submit with the attachment (nothing happens). Is there a glitch?
0
Jennifer Lee
Where can I add my interest in a public & private reply being added at the same time becoming a native feature? I understand the suggestion at this time is the Private Comments app.
0
Brett Bowser
You'll want to share this as feedback in the following topic: Feedback - Ticketing System (Support)
Thanks for taking the time to share this with us!
0
Dave Symonds
Hi
We are trying to generate a public/private response in our other system and use the API to deliver this as into Zendesk for the ticket as a Zendesk public/private response. Is it possible to deliver the message maintaining the text format it was created with? That is deliver RTF using the API?
Thanks
0
Rajeswara Rao Devavarapu
Hello all,
If we user @name in the internal note, will it send an email to name user. Please let me where we do the settings in Zendesk regarding this.
Thanks in advance :)
0
Jupete Manitas
Are you trying to send or forward ticket content from Zendesk to an external email or system? If that is right, the main feature using that use case is through webhook and using trigger or automation to send out the ticket content from zendesk to an external system. The body formats are the following: JSON, XML, or Form-encoded content. We don't have samples since customization is out of our scope of support but you may look into this another discussion on how they format their webhook - How to format a comment when using Notify active webhook action?
Hi Rajesrawarao,
It looks like you are referring to the "Using @mentions". Once another agent is mentioned, a notification will be sent to the user.
Thank you!
0
Chelsea Schott
Hi! Are there plans to add the ability to sort comments in a ticket so newest is on top rather than oldest?
0
Amisha Sharma
Hello all, please see an update on the order of messages pain point here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4409222725530/comments/5937176966042
0
Vigraman Vinayagamoorthi
Hi Jupete Manitas Amisha Sharma ,
I'm updating a ticket through API.
If we update a Zendesk ticket with
commentAuthorEmail
set to the customer’s email(Who's external user) andpublic
set to false, will the customer still receive an email?Thanks in advance.
0